


One Night In Paris

by drelfina



Series: The Unrequited Love [1]
Category: Casino Royale (2006), James Bond (Craig movies), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Bond_rarepairs, F/M, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism, Multi, Unrequited Love, sucks to be Q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drelfina/pseuds/drelfina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He meets her after she dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Night In Paris

**Author's Note:**

> Unrequited feeeeelings, saddest violin love life ever, unexplained magic realism because lols. Dedicated to Rikacain on LJ because I feel like it and she cheered me on and inspired me with a thought. :D Written and posted to the [Bond Rarepairs community](http://bond_rarepairs.livejournal.com) on LJ. (link [ here](http://bond-rarepairs.livejournal.com/3279.html))

He meets her after she dies.

He did, actually know this. He was, after all, Nocturne, and names have a power that only an absolute fool would discount, and Night is the time of death, because it is Rest.

He meets her in a cafe , in Paris, because that is where the best pastry is.

"Is this seat taken?" she asks, sliding in opposite him, her purse on her lap and her hands shaking on a cigarette. He puts down his book, and pulls his cup of coffee closer to himself. "No, it isn't," he answers in English because she'd asked, in English, and she looks at him.

"Oh. Oh Oxford," she says, because his accent is a give away.

(Except he can use any accent he wishes, but this was the one he'd picked up, from studying in Oxford, really, so it's not a lie, it's the closest to the truth, the way every boy who had gone from ---- Street to Westminister to Oxford would have, and let's give thanks to upward social mobility shall we?)

He inclines his head. "London," he says. She has a perfect London accent, just the wobbliest around the edges, so that it was clear to him, who made a hobby of accents, that she was putting it on. It isn't her native accent, and she had learnt it clearly from a school, perhaps, when she started work. To an outsider, to an American, she would sound perfectly English from no particular part.

"Indeed," she says, and her smile is perfect, practised, just a little smeared.

When the waiter comes, she orders a croissant in schoolgirl French, and café au lait. There's something trembling in her, in the way she fixes her lipstick in the tiny little handmirror she takes from her clutch, the way she stares, and then touches the knot at her clavical.

He has made a habit of reading people, because if he didn't, his life would soon be very difficult in his chosen profession, and he thinks he might strike up conversation, perhaps.

The coffee arrives before he can say anything, and a check for his own drink.

"I shall pay for hers too," he says, offering to sign with a pen instead of the proffered thumbscan.

"You don't need to," she starts to say, but her eyes widen at his offering. "You're a -"

He bows his head a little. "I am."

She stares. More.

Her croissant arrives, and she turns to it, eating it with neat bites that leave minimum crumbs on the plate, and her coffee is drained. He reads his book, apparently not ruffled by her regard, until they stand to leave.

"Namemancer," she says, when he stands.

"Yes," he says. Names had power - a signature of a normal person wasnt worth much, in the great run of things, but if a thief got hold of a thumbprint, they could merely ruin one's financial standing. An ill-gotten signature could spell the end of autonomy and self-determination. A simple scribbled signature on a credit card invoice wouldn't be worth much to a namemancer, but to one who works the magic itself, it was not worth risking.

"Can you," she says, hesitates. Tries again. "I have a boyfriend," she says with a low, rushed hush. "he... he was kidnapped. Can you find him?"

Her fingers stray to the knot, and he, just intrigued because it is Paris, and it was evening, says, "Yes."

"Good, I'm Vesper," she says.

How appropriate, he thinks. "You may call me Nocturne."

* * *

That first time, in Paris, two streets down from a nameless cafe, was not the actual time she died. But her trust had died, indeed, and it was a powerful thing. Trust in a normal life, trust in a lover, trust in the way the sun rose and sun set; when one's world went askew, one did strange things one doesn't normally think of. Desperatet things.

She should have gone to the police.

But she was in Paris, with her boyfriend, and when she'd returned from a shower, she'd only seen a note on her dresser, telling her he was gone, and they wanted money.

Except that, when she had left in a daze, she had seen him, she thought she had seen him, walking off with a woman, another woman, blond, and now she didn't know what to think. That he was so easily kidnapped away by a woman - the cheating, straying bastard - or that she had seen things?

She didn't know.

Nocturne hummed and turned the scrap of paper over, the one she had written the man's name on. It wasn't an easy procedure, and could take the police days, really. But Nocturne was talented, and could get a sense of things, easy, just no particular details.

And got...

"He is in America right now," he says, which was quite, quite wrong. It wasn't right that he was, because he had been in her hotel room only two hours ago, and there was very little you could do to get from the European continent to the Americas, even with the advancements in travel these days.

"He lied," she says, voice shaky, and now it was anger, furiousness. "he lied to me about his name, and we were going to be married!"

There were plenty of reasons to lie about one's names, some even innocuous. Sometimes one had to take restraining orders out, and sometimes one was adopted. But he had been with her for two years, she said, that was plenty of time for a new name to settle, and it hadn't. This meant that it was fake, all along, an assumed identity.

She ends up crying in her hotel room, Nocturne a little, uneasy at the foot of her bed, and when he tries to leave, she tells him to stay.

Gives him the necklace, the silver knotted chains, and tells him to keep it, as payment. And to stay.

* * *

The death of love is a slow, torturous thing. She asks him to remove her memory.

He could do it, he can. He has that poewr. But he doesn't have the equipment, and it's risky, besides, it had the potential of removing all of her memories.

SHe doesn't ask again.

* * *

She tries to overwrite him, the liar, the lover who didn't exist, with him, kissing him. She kisses like tears, hot, wet and slippery, silvery in the night, and he can feel himself start to respond, but.

No.

He turns her down, gently, because she is vesper, and he can feel power in her skin, the way her grey eyes look at him, when he touches her.

"If we do," he says, "it will be when your love has died entirely."

She laughs at him, "what do you know of love, boy?"

She is ten years older than him, beautiful as evening, and he turns her down.

* * *

He has always been jealous - possessive, even, perhaps, and it was a trait suitable for his profession. Jealous of information, jealous of power , and now, jealous of love, which was strange, because he wouldn't have thought he'd be jealous of a woman half in love, even when she knows the other is a liar.

Maybe it was the death of self-delusion then.

So now he knows, he's jealous of love, too, and he will give anything to have her his, entire.

* * *

Vesper calls him, later, from Venice.

She is in love, she says. How was it possible, for a heart to hold two people, one so perfect, and one so flawed?

His heart trips in his throat, and for a moment thinks, maybe one is him, it doesn't matter whether he be perfect or flawed, just that she loves him.

But it is another name that skips over her tongue, even as he rolls her name across his fingertips, and sees love written fond and deep across her heart, love for someone not him.

"I need your help," she says.

"I'm in Venice," she says.

And he goes.

* * *

The money, she says, she had to give them money. They knew she didn't believe Yusef Kabira really existed, even though the love was there, twisted and turned in on itself in her heart.

But she knew James Bond, and the name was like ash on Nocturne's mouth, but he went anyway.

She stands on the bridge, a suitcase in her hands.

"Help me," she says. "I love them both."

And he reads the acceptance, the death in her eyes and voice, and she lets him step close, and when they kiss, she can taste the ash of his acceptance.

* * *

He loves her, and he is surprised by the full depth of it, because he helps her die, taking her fear with it so she can walk to her death, knowing that the money in her hands would save James Bond, save Yusef Kabira, and doom herself.

He takes her body's memory of life, for the next few years it was still owed - "Yours, take it," she says - and so she dies, quick and painless in the water of the Venetian canals.

* * *

He graduates University a year later, the classes a blur, graduates with full honours.

Death is ashy silver on his tongue, and he still has that knot.

He gets recruited by MI6, which is irony, because it is MI6's fault that she dies, and now part of her is alive in the basements of their HQ.

He meets James Bond in the National Gallery, feeling the old tiny love the man had for Vesper, true and bright like silver, his eyes blue and deadly where Vesper's had been grey and intelligent.

And there, he gives up the name Nocturne, buries it with Vesper.

The next gun he makes, for James Bond, he melts the silver necklace and impregnates the palm reader with it. And on the inside, amongst the electronics of the reader, where no one will ever see, he writes, in the silver from the necklace, "Q".

**Author's Note:**

> I shall never stop being amused by how Vesper, being ten years older and vastly more worldly than Q was at this point, would give Q everything - the rest of her years, her trust, and her _name_ , but not her heeeeeeart. 
> 
> Cue the tiniest violin ever for Q and his complete lack of a love life.


End file.
